Skip to content

Historical field note

This record preserves ground-truth investigation evidence for a single dream finding. It is not a current operating contract; use the numbered book and current runbooks for instructions.

Ground Truth: dream finding dreamrepair:394db89d377ef58abf97ace7d54d728c (slack failure_pattern)

Task: task_7df391b62f8a4232b2c604f4a6e91acb — read-only, investigation-only audit for parent task_c3f26a52452648a6994afb50257af219 ("Investigate low-confidence dream finding: slack"), plan node investigation. This document records ground truth only. It changes no src/, tests/, skills/, or deploy/ file and makes no skill, tool, or provider repair.

Prepared by: fleet worker (investigation node; no production code, test, skill, config, or deploy edits).

Verdict

NOT ACTIONABLE as a slack repair — evidence gap, no real slack-provider failure exists. The signal is noise from a single, self-referential one-off record.

(a) Is the finding actionable? — No

There is no concrete, reproducible defect in any slack provider, skill, or tool that a code or skill change would fix. The finding is a low-confidence (0.35, evidence_count=1) failure_pattern whose only target is the bare provider label slack, whose sole evidence record is the auto-generated failure outcome of a source task that itself failed for environment reasons and never performed an investigation, and whose lineage is a self-referential feedback loop 15 generations deep.

(b) Concrete evidence supporting that call

The finding's claim (from dream_repair.classification)

  • fingerprint: dreamrepair:394db89d377ef58abf97ace7d54d728c
  • kind: failure_pattern; scope: project mac
  • confidence: low (overall_confidence_score = 0.35); evidence_count = 1
  • affected: providers ["slack"]; skills, tools, repo_areas all empty
  • signal: \bslack\b — a plain word-boundary regex on the token "slack"

Every discriminating field is empty or a generic label. 0.35 reflects support < 2, not a diagnosed fault.

The single supporting record is a failed task's own outcome memory

  • record: mem_6d53574e86a548c2a0658f33c43641cb (record_type = deployment_learning:mac, created by mac-task-executor).
  • content (verbatim fields): outcome = "failure", evidence_type = "investigation", error_signature = "" (empty), repository = "", signals = {returncode: 1, tests: null, checks_pass: null, files_changed: null, pushed: null}, task_id = task_0836b4b1c802465a93e3bd6a1affcfc0, task_title = "Investigate low-confidence dream finding: slack".

This is the executor's auto-emitted closure record for the source task, not an observation of a broken slack integration. It carries an empty error signature and no slack-specific detail.

The source task never investigated anything

  • source task task_0836b4b1c802465a93e3bd6a1affcfc0: state = failed, failure_class = environment, activity shows executor_failed / non_retryable_attempt_failure at sandbox startup.
  • Its salvage.recorded_lessons is exactly [mem_6d53574e86a548c2a0658f33c43641cb] — i.e., this finding's sole evidence is the salvage/outcome memory of a task that died in its environment before doing any slack work.

The finding was minted by the nap/dream loop from that one record

  • The dream:failure_pattern record mem_8e0638d1f9774af3b25ca53f6aeaa727 (created by nap-ticker) has a single evidence pointer to mem_6d53574e... and its only observations entry is the literal string "[failure] Investigate low-confidence dream finding: slack (investigation)". The provider label slack is \bslack\b matching the word "slack" in the prior task's own title, not a diagnosed slack fault.
  • slack is a known provider token the classifier recognizes (src/mac/dream_cycle_classifier.py), so any title containing the word gets the label regardless of substance.

The lineage is self-referential, 15 generations deep

Walking each generation's dream_repair.candidate.task_id upward:

task_0836b4b1  failed/environment  394db89d… <-- this finding's source task
  <- task_183affd  failed/environment
    <- task_648ccf21 failed/environment
      <- task_68e838c5 failed/environment
        <- task_48e57996 failed/environment
          <- task_ec90bcd9 failed/environment
            <- task_14c901cd failed/environment
              <- task_7485257c failed/environment
                <- task_77121bb1 failed/environment
                  <- task_13edcff7 failed/environment
                    <- task_3f4a754d failed/environment
                      <- task_26953e7c failed/environment
                        <- task_c7e109f6 failed/environment
                          <- task_46bd1a84 cancelled
                            <- task_027ac881 failed/work (root audit)

Every ancestor is failed (mostly failure_class=environment) or cancelled; every generation carries a DISTINCT fingerprint, so fingerprint dedup never suppresses the recurrence. Each generation's only evidence is the previous generation's own deployment_learning outcome memory — zero net-new signal.

The root audit already reached this conclusion

  • root task task_027ac881b6914677b9bf3aa704d3cc91 (failure_class = work) actually performed the audit and recorded: the finding is NOT ACTIONABLE, the single evidence was a success outcome (a plan_decomposed task), and slack is a bare regex token — not a diagnosed fault. That task failed only on the repository push/contract gate, not on the substance of its audit.

No slack surface is implicated

  • The finding names no file, tool, skill, or error signature. A read-only scan of src/, skills/, and deploy/ finds a messaging-platform slack binding in the Hermes gateway surface, but nothing in the finding points at it and there is no reproducible failure, stack trace, or failing test against it. The task worktree is clean.

(c) The specific evidence gap (why not actionable)

  • Single, self-referential record: support is one record, and that record is the source task's own failure-outcome memory — net-new independent signal is zero.
  • Empty error signature: mem_6d53574e... carries error_signature = "" and returncode = 1 with no slack-specific detail; there is nothing to reproduce or repair.
  • Environment failure, not a slack failure: the source task failed at sandbox startup (failure_class = environment, executor_failed); it never exercised any slack path.
  • Label is a title regex match: slack comes from \bslack\b matching the word "slack" in the prior task title, not from a diagnosed provider fault; all skill/tool/repo_area fields are empty.
  • No independent corroboration: every generation reuses the previous generation's memory; there is no second, independent observation of a real slack failure.
  • Sole record not retrievable by id: direct hub fetches for mem_6d53574e... at /memory/<id>, /memories/<id>, and /mac/memory/<id> return HTTP 404 while /health returns 200 (the record is reachable only via the task_id-scoped /memory search, not a not-found service).

Disposition and reopen criteria

  • Decision: NOT ACTIONABLE as a slack repair. Close finding dreamrepair:394db89d377ef58abf97ace7d54d728c as such.
  • Genuine underlying issue is upstream in the dream-repair pipeline, not in any slack provider/skill/tool: the loop treats a failed task's own outcome memory as fresh failure evidence and emits each recurrence under a distinct fingerprint, so dedup cannot suppress the chain. Remediation belongs to the pipeline/process and is out of scope for this investigation-only task.
  • Reopen (slack track only) if the slack surface acquires a reproducible failure signature (a real error, stack trace, or failing test) backed by at least two independent, non-self-referential evidence records.

Verification performed

  • Retrieved source task_0836b4b1... and grandparent task_183affd... via the hub tasks API; confirmed state=failed, failure_class=environment, and salvage.recorded_lessons = [mem_6d53574e...].
  • Fetched mem_6d53574e... via /memory?task_id=task_0836b4b1...; confirmed record_type=deployment_learning:mac, outcome=failure, error_signature="", created by mac-task-executor.
  • Identified the minting dream:failure_pattern record mem_8e0638d1... (by nap-ticker); confirmed its single evidence pointer and title-derived observation string.
  • Walked 15 generations of candidate.task_id ancestry to the root audit task_027ac881...; confirmed all failed/cancelled, distinct fingerprints, and that the root audit already found the finding NOT ACTIONABLE.
  • Confirmed no slack provider/skill/tool is named by the finding and the worktree is clean. No src/, tests/, skills/, or deploy/ file was edited. Fleet-generic: no secrets, hostnames, personal paths, or operator identities are recorded.